Trinity resident Clifford Wilson says he has been able to hear the sound – which he describes as a ‘low-frequency humming’ noise – for several years.
‘It seems to be there virtually all the time,’ he said.
‘Sometimes I am aware of it more than I am at other times but if I put my mind to it, it seems to be there all the time.’
The 67-year-old said that his wife cannot hear the noise, however a friend of Mr Wilson’s who is a resident in St Mary said that they can hear the ‘low-resonating’ sound, which is keeping them awake at night.
An Islander in Rozel has also reported hearing the noise.
The St Mary resident contacted the Environmental Health Department last year and officers visited the area to investigate.
However, neither of the officers could hear the sound so it was not possible to trace and an independent noise expert was also unable to locate the source.
Mr Wilson said: ‘I just assumed that I was picking up the sound and other people were not.
‘It is a far off very low-level sound – the kind of sound that you might receive from the engines of a passing ship.
‘I would call it a resonance, because it seems to be in one’s head.
‘Once you hear it you can tune in to it and it can be a nuisance.’
Stewart Petrie, interim head of Environmental Health, said that low-frequency noises can be difficult to trace and if the noise is inaudible to the ‘average person’ then the department has no powers to take any formal action.
‘If they are audible to our officers we can attempt to trace the source,’ he said.
‘If they are detectable by our equipment we can carry out frequency analysis, which often points to a mains electrical source which we can sometimes trace.’
Mr Wilson says he now plans to contact the Environmental Health Department himself to see if they can get to the bottom of the mystery.
Similar reports of a strange low-frequency noise were reported by a resident in St Ouen in 2009, who lived in a neighbourhood which became known as the ‘Millais Triangle’.
The resident reported hearing a strange humming noise, just months after residents’ remote car keys mysteriously stopped working.
The cause of the noise remains unsolved more than six years on.
- In September 2006 dozens of Islanders reported seeing a fox. There was some speculation that the mysterious creature could have been a dog called Cola, but the case was never solved.
- In 2007 dozens of toads suddenly turned up on the Dicq slip in St Saviour. One theory was that the toads may have been mating in a nearby pond when they were washed down the road in storm water.
- On the morning of 15 April 2009, worried Islanders contacted the JEP as the skies had gone so dark the street lights were tricked into thinking it was night-time. The darkness was caused by an unusual combination of a thunderstorm rolling in above the mist and murk and blocking out most of the Islands natural light.
- In February 2012 hundreds of Islanders reported hearing a plane flying low over Jersey at night. It turned out to be an old Russian cargo plane whose noise was bounced to a low level by unusually cold conditions.
